Can we tackle drug resistance by de-coding the structure of cells?
Cancer types:
Breast cancer
Project period:
–
Research institute:
Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde da Universidade do Porto (I3S)
Award amount:
£233,004
Location:
Portugal
Professor Maiato and his team in Portugal are tackling one of the biggest challenges in breast cancer – the problem of tumours becoming resistant to treatments. Their curiosity about why some drugs stop working will lead them towards new cures that will work alongside existing treatments, helping patients live longer.
Why is this research needed?
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women worldwide, and can affect anyone. Thanks to research, treatments have come a long way and now almost 9 out of 10 women will survive their cancer for 5 years or more. But there are many different types of breast cancer and some are more difficult to treat than others. It is a devastating disease for patients when treatment doesn’t work.
Taxol is an effective type of chemotherapy that is often used to treat breast cancer, as well as several other cancers. Developed from the bark of the Pacific yew tree, it’s been used since the 1990s and treated thousands of patients worldwide.
Patients often respond well to therapy with Taxol only to later develop treatment resistance – meaning the cancer comes back and the chemotherapy has stopped working. Professor Maiato wants to understand better why this happens, and find ways to prevent treatment resistance. This could help thousands of patients if their chemotherapy stops working, giving them another chance at getting years of their lives back.
We are absolutely convinced by the strength of the evidence so far that we will be able to help cancer patients in multiple ways, either by identifying those that are likely to benefit the most from current therapies, but also by offering a solution to overcome resistance to these therapies, which still represents the main threat to patient survival.
What is the science behind this project?
The chemotherapy drug Taxol works by targeting a particular structure in cancer cells called a microtubule. This tiny structure plays key roles in how our cells:
- move about
- divide
- communicate with each other
- respond to their environment
Since cancer is an uncontrolled division of cells, microtubules are a great target for anti-cancer drugs as disrupting their behaviour can prevent cancer cells from dividing, eventually causing the cells to die.
Dr Maiato and his team have been investigating microtubules to de-code the ways they work in cancers and in normal cells. They have found that there are some unique signatures to microtubules that may explain why they sometimes stop responding to drugs like Taxol.
What difference could this project make to patients in the future?
With your support, this ground-breaking project will look for ways to identify if patients are likely to become resistant to treatment based on the signatures in their cells. Being able to tell whether or not someone will respond to therapy by looking at their cells could help patients with breast cancer by finding the right treatment for them, sooner.
The team hope that their results will lead to tests that allow doctors to predict whether a patient is likely to develop treatment resistance. They plan to uncover new drugs that could work in combination with chemotherapy to help the treatment work again– giving patients a second chance if their first treatment fails. This could have real consequences for patients with hard-to-treat cancers like triple negative breast cancer, providing more options and preventing lives being cut short.
Donate to support more research like this
By choosing to make a donation today you can help us fund more of these bright ideas for new ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat cancer.
Complete France
Breast cancer
Researchers hope to find better, more personalised treatments for breast cancer patients by identifying characteristics that predict how a tumour will behave.
Researcher: Dr Anne Vincent-Salomon
Using AI to predict drug resistance mutations in breast cancer
Active Spain
Breast cancer
The team hope that by understanding how different mutations contribute to breast cancer, they can reveal new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat it.
Researcher: Dr Aura Carreira
Uncovering how a faulty BRCA2 gene causes breast cancer to develop
Active Sweden
Multiple cancers
This project hopes to discover more about the biology of how solid tumours develop to find new ways to prevent, diagnose or treat these cancers.
Researcher: Professor Staffan Stromblad
Understanding how 'tissue stiffening' affects cancer development